| words@bld50 monthly talks |
Thursday 9 June, 6pm
Dandenong Town Hall,
Drum Theatre
Lonsdale Street
Dandenong
(Update! The talk is now available online to view in bite size instalments - see below!)
We're back! Our talk series kicks off for 2011 with a timely discussion of politics and public space.
What is the role of public space in the struggle for democracy?
Dovey will share his insights on this theme, and reflect on recent events in the Middle East - where the role of the public square as a place of dissent has been brought into sharp focus.
While practices of public debate are largely confined to the institutions of governance and the mass media, significant struggles for democratic change have long been identified with the spectacle of protest and violence in key squares and streets. These include Tiananmen in Beijing, Ratchadamnoen and Ratchaprasong in Bangkok, Tahrir Square in Cairo and Pearl Square, Bahrain. This lecture will explore the appropriation of such places in terms of naming, history, surrounding institutions, urban design, spatial structure, access, traffic, communications and global media. Such appropriations are multiplicitous, rhizomic, dynamic and complex. They affirm Lefebre’s principle of the citizen’s ‘right to the city’ and the much older Socratic principle that urban space only becomes genuinely public through the contestation of different views.
Kim Dovey is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne. He has published widely on social issues in architecture, urban design and planning. Books include 'Framing Places' (Routledge, 2008), 'Fluid City' (UNSW Press 2005) and ‘Becoming Places’ (Routledge 2010). He currently leads a series of research projects on place identity, urban intensification, informal settlements and creative cities.
Same place - RMIT bldg 50, Orr St (off Victoria St), Carlton.
The talk will be followed by light refreshments. Hope you can join us!
Update! The talk is now available online to view in bite size instalments - see below!
Other event dates...
Thursday 4 June 2009 - 7.00pm RMIT Building 50, Orr St, Carlton Entry by gold coin donation.. refreshments provided.
Brendan Jones (Antarctica and RMIT), Ian Watts (Antarctica) and students from the 2008 Home away from home design studio.
Brendan and Ian will present three challenging design studios run at RMIT since 2007 that tackle the idea of engaging the professional practice of architecture, the academic insititution and the community, and reflect, with the help of students, upon the lessons learned. 
Antarctica began its work in the area of general practice and primary care in 2007 with the RMIT studio and subsequent architectural workbook, Rebirth of a clinic. This work was run in conjunction with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), and this association led to a call for expressions of interest from Aboriginal Health Centres around Australia for the 2008 studio Home away from home - Architecture for healthy Aboriginal communities. The studio's broad ambition was to help “close the gap” in the health status of Aboriginal people, compared with other social demographics. It required 10 students to work collaboratively, well beyond standard academic requirements, and produce a design for the Ampilatwatja Medical Centre located in a remote area of the Northern Territory. The group was projected into a seemingly infinite landscape and then placed in an intense and fragile community. They responded with a respectful, believable, working piece of architecture.
Seeking Asylum is the current studio being run at RMIT and explores the architectural issues of responding to the social, housing and health needs of people with severe mental health problems.
Presented by Hui Chuan Wang, landscape architect and artist
7pm, Thursday 5 March 2009
RMIT bldg 50, Orr St
Refreshments provided. Entry by gold coin donation (all donations will go to bushfire relief efforts)
Yongle gong is a Daoist chief-ancestor temple built in the Yuan dynasty (14th century) in Shanxi province (山西), China. The temple is decorated by both figural and architectural mural paintings. The figural paintings are regarded as some of the highest quality examples in China. Conversely, the architectural mural paintings have scarcely attracted scholarly attention so far.
Hui says:
"When I first started to work on Yongle gong’s architectural mural paintings for my PhD, my aim was to understand the depiction methods used in these paintings. In other words I wanted to analyse the processes used from the artist’s point of view. This meant that the painting principles from ancient Chinese texts had to be studied first. A nucleus of two painting principles provided the framework for a series of empirical graphic studies tracing the methodology of planning and executing architectural mural paintings. In the course of this investigation the original meaning of those painting principles was re-assessed.
My study of Yongle gong's architectural paintings showed that the grid system was used for the graphic composition of traditional Chinese architectural murals, and both converging and parallel lines were employed to depict architecture in three-dimensions. I tested these methods on two other architectural murals roughly approximating Yongle Gong in date and location: Prince Yide's tomb (懿德太子墓) and Yan shan si temple (严山寺). They confirmed that the grid system, Jing ying wei zhi, parallel lines, Yi xie bai sui, and converging lines, Yi qu bai xie were fundamental methods used to generate visually and symbolically cohesive architectural mural compositions."
Prior to commencing this PhD study, Hui Chuan Wang was involved professionally in the field of housing in Taiwan for more than ten years, and completed a Master of landscape architecture at the University of Melbourne. Hui also practices as an artist and involves in charities. Her paintings have received several awards and been exhibited both in Taiwan and Australia.
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The first of the series @bld50 this year: Wednesday February 15, 8:30pm
a conversation will follow to introduce our new website item "urban world, arch-peace in the many languages"
Lingua 5 is the name of an experimental public art project.This project started with 5 artists leaded by Dale Nason, artist and lecturer at RMIT. We construct a colaborative project based on our different languages. The project is about sharing our languages and cultures through experimental artforms “language exchange actions”
Aslam from Afganistan speaks Dari
Kevin from Hong Kong speaks Cantonese
Karla from Mexico speaks Spanish
Pei from Taiwan speaks Mandarin
Hani from Israel speak Hebrew
Based on the idea of 5 people from 5 countries teaching and learning 5 languages and sharing their cultures, we each chose 5 words we wanted to learn
Aslam's words are: Water, Air, Sun, Earth, Stars
Kevin's words are: Do you understand? Where is the toilet? party, alcohol, milk
Karlas' words are: Hello, I love you, What is your name? Thank you, Please
Pei's words are: Don't cry, This is mine, Secret, Please tell me, Home
Hani words are: Peace, Eyes, Heart, Children, Sorry
Public Intervention
On Thursday the 18th of August the Lingua 5 group had its first public art outing. We: Aslam, Karla and Hani with the help of Joy, Dale and Cery walked down Swanston St acquitted with a paper roll, sticky tape and colourful textures to the posters pole on the corner of Burke St and Swanston St,Melbourne. The pole was quickly covered with white paper from top to bottom and messages of harmony and sharing were written by the group members in their language of origin. Soon we were joined by passers by who also wanted to send a message in their on language (posted by Hani at “lingua 5 blog” on Sunday, August 21, 2005)
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Impressions of Turkey:
by C. 
An important aspect for me is the relationship between architecture and nature. Respect for animals is not only expressed in heritage buildings, which provided shelter for humans, other mammals and birds. Water, which is freely offered in the many fountains, provides the public with a free collective service while embellishing the cities. Cities embody life and spontaneity that cannot be contained, vibrancy that does not need to be artificially created to exist.
In Istanbul, the quality and magnitude of the city’s centre public space - where living, working, visiting, modernity and history intermingle, give the impression of a genuinely vital urban centre, not characteristic in market driven cities or of over regulated societies.
For anyone interested in this topic, I found a book by Cengiz Bektaş called Kuş Evleri or Bird Houses. I have collected some photographs and I hope that they convey, at least in part, the wealth and multiplicity of the public space.
To see my collection go to: ArchNet
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Public Space - Art and Urban Planning
ARC Biennial
Art, Design and Craft Biennial, October 20 – 30 2005
Brisbane City Hall, Queensland, Australia
Anthony McInneny
This is an edited version of a paper presented by Anthony McInneny on behalf of Architects for Peace as one of a panel of three speakers that included Timothy Hill (architect and partner of Donovan Hill) and Jay Younger (associate professor at Queensland College of Art). The panel was to respond to the following question:
“If public art is an essential feature of a well-designed city, why are so many projects deemed failures? Panelist discuss the future of public art, and the responsibilities of planners and decision-makers to the public (and vice versa)”
I was invited to speak on this panel in response to an overview I wrote of a conference entitled IntentCity conducted by Architects for Peace. The conference was ambitious; free to the public, outdoor in a public space and funded by individual members, not a government department. One of the central ideas of the conference was to discuss the political city in a new space claimed for public debate rather than passive recreation.
When I think of Public Art, my mind immediately imagines objects in public spaces. The evolution of public art practice has been successful in extending the notion beyond sculpture in public spaces and has skilled up, as it were, visual and performing artists to work in the public realm and collaborate (or to chose not to collaborate) with other practices, agents and professions of the built environment. As Jay Younger pointed out, public art programs have provided a lot of employment for artists and is similar in many ways to a public works program for artists.
Creative processes of administration and commissioning (if that is not a contradiction in terms) have tended to shut down in the face of controversy. This is particularly the case in Melbourne spanning the Vault in the 1970’s to the recent fiasco with painted trees near the sacred MCG in 2004. Unfortunately, independent benefactors in Australia have not been keen to fund a public art program similar to the New York Public Art Fund or Artangel.
The assumption in the question for today’s panel is that we live and work within well-designed cities and that in some way public art has failed the city.
Artworks crystallize the times in which they are made and within which we live. Perhaps we not only get the politicians we deserve but also the public artworks.
“In other countries it has been well recognized that often artists are the spearhead for subsequent gentrification of areas where space is cheap”. In an argument for a national percentage for arts capital works program[1], the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) proffers that “In other countries it has been well recognized that often artists are the spearhead for subsequent gentrification of areas where space is cheap”. This is probably true but I don’t remember the speculative property market as being part of the artist’s intent. Speculative property markets and speculative financial markets in general have dominated our economy, psychology, culture and public spaces. Gentrified cities and public spaces reflect a certain social agenda, one of exclusion through income and in the absence of meaningful social housing policy. How can public art in this setting reflect anything more that urban tourist attractions for the commuters or an expression of status or lost heritage for the residents?
The suburban sprawl of most of Australia’ capital cities could hardly be described as well designed. Car dependent, low density, dormitory suburbs with houses larger than can be lived in, heated or cooled and furnished with every form of entertainment as a consolation for a lack of social and built infrastructure. Without increased density in our suburbs, public transport and social infrastructure are not viable. We are trapped in an individual, car centric world that demonstrates the failures of urban planning and public policy. The city centre becomes an island and the outer suburbs, where the majority of people live, becomes less sustainable and separated from social and political life.
The image of the bus stop/ad shell is included for a number of reasons.
It reminds me of the visual pollution created throughout our cities as we abdicate our right to not be subjected to propaganda in our most public of public spaces. It would appear that this form of rented public space is the only way this country can afford a second rate commuter transport system.
I have a sense of nostalgia for the idea that I once caught a piece of public artwork. The W class trams of Melbourne, painted by established and aspiring artists, were a quaint notion of public art in the late 70’ and 80’s. We now stand at billboards and consent to catching and becoming part of advertising campaigns.
A recent artwork I developed was not able to be located on the preferred site because, in part, it obscured the view of such an advertisement.
Lastly, it is not unusual for advertising and art to appropriate one another but this reproduction of Holbein’s Ambassadors has a peculiar twist. The anamorphic skull representing mortality has been removed for no apparent reason.
While the streets of CBD Melbourne are full of public artworks, very few actually deal with the notion of public space in any more successful or meaningful way than the monuments of conquest and war that dominated Australian cities for over half the 20 Century. Perhaps the comparison with these monuments is not too far off the mark. What types of memorials will be made for the War on Iraq and the never ending War on Terror? Perhaps we are making them in our cities and as artists in a state of amnesia or denial.
In another step into this twilight zone, historic monuments for “just wars”, WWI and WWII, are being stripped of their relevance, their site specificity as it were, by being relocated from public places of daily life to memorial precincts or closer to the club for the diggers. The example illustrated is the First World War bugler to be relocated from the major intersection of Station Street and Whitehorse Road in Box Hill at the request of the local RSL.
In a similar fashion, art precincts are the resting place for tired or problematic public artworks. Most notably, the Vault has found its final resting place in the public space surrounding its architectural equivalent, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, ACCA. A recent exhibition at ACCA during the Melbourne Festival was an empty room with the light switched off by the exhibiting artist who works in the public domain, Martin Creed. This is epic stuff according to the experts. An easily dismissed one-line joke becomes disturbingly serious when art teachers, with VCE students in tow, explain how they become part of an artwork by entering a dark room.
The most recently created public space in Melbourne, Federation Square, is a cluster of commendable cultural and institutional buildings that surrounds an open air, undulating public artwork by Paul Carter. This work forms the surface of the square that dissuades sitting, standing or any other activity for that matter except for consumption on the perimeters in cafes. Like a 1950’s house on a quarter acre block that ignores the backyard, Federation Square turns its back on the Yarra River and, to complete the suburban metaphor places a large screen television as the dominant feature in the corner of this public living room. When guests arrive, and I would argue that we are all guests in Federation Square, you have to turn the telly down or off if you want to talk but please, don’t sit on the new furniture because there is nowhere to sit.
The most symbolic of our public institutions, the new Parliament House in Canberra was designed with a gesture to the public. Able to walk over Parliament House, we demonstrate participatory democracy. While down the hill, the Aboriginal embassy struggles to maintain it’s heritage status in front of the Old Parliament House turned into yet another museum of democracy, a fitting end to the idea that parliament actually represents people was a community/public art project commemorating the Centenary of Federation. 1000 cardboard cutouts of significant members of our communities, nominated and decorated by citizens were the last people to walk on the grass roof of parliament house. This was 2001 just before the barricades went up.
“In line with a review of security and access, the commissioning body is pursuing opportunities to incorporate landscape and artwork as elements which not only increase the amenity of the reserve, but will limit car access to sensitive government buildings[1]”
“In line with a review of security and access, the commissioning body is pursuing opportunities to incorporate landscape and artwork as elements which not only increase the amenity of the reserve, but will limit car access to sensitive government buildings[2]”
This is an excerpt of an “Artist’s Brief” I recently received and, perhaps foolishly, submitted my resume as an expression of interest. The only other surprise was the fact that the turn around time on this project from concept to installation was less than four months. This is a project for a major site in Melbourne CBD. This is not an isolated case in the flurry of developments and events for the Commonwealth Games in March 2006. All briefs have an agenda, even straight commissions but I have never seen one that explicitly states that art should be a security barrier.
The trouble with commissioning bodies that are public institutions or instrumentalities is not that they have a constituency to which they answer but that very few of the people who represent or have power within these bodies actually value art for what it is, not what it does. There is an almost total disregard for the artistic process to develop a response to a site over a period of time. Art is not simply a design process.
One would be naïve to think that a government or private developer would actually fund works of dissent. What is less apparent is that the room for dissent to actually exist is being squeezed out of public space.
I am a great supporter of the City of Melbourne. I believe that many of its programs are artist focused. I am a member of the Public Art Advisory Committee. The work illustrated is the work of Aslan McClennan. This is part of a body of work that was deemed unacceptable for the City Lights gallery. What was also unacceptable and banned from the 24/7 Gallery that is partly sponsored by the City of Melbourne was a body of works on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The first in this series was an Israeli flag covered with statistics about the number of Palestinians killed and significant political and historical dates and events. The second proposed work of a Palestinian Flag with similar information on Israeli casualties never got to see the light of day. The first work was ordered to be removed.
I found a subtle indication of our inability to objectively look at history in an exhibition of migrant gardens in Brisbane in City Hall today. Historical background is provided referring in one instance to the invasion of Afghanistan and in another to the Vietnam Civil War. The fact that we were directly involved in the later and not the former is not mentioned.
Moving to private public space, the Docklands in Melbourne in an attempt to incorporate artworks in public spaces has done two things badly. Individually the artworks are significant pieces. What the Docklands authority has done is to return to the notion of “plop art” and in doing so have either created an outdoor gallery for works that bare no relationship to the site or co-opted works into private spaces, the foyers and facades of buildings. This gallery and the waterfront become a forecourt for the apartments and, like Federation Square, unless you are consuming or attending an “event” there is little reason to visit. That the Docklands is actually public space in anything other than land title may change with the collapse of the investment property market.
I will close my discussion with the image of one of a series of six “successful” works for freeways in Melbourne. This public art project was developed by a group of Western suburb Councils in Melbourne who are trying to convey that the traditionally working class, industrial suburbs are undergoing a transition – effectively one could argue it is part of a marketing exercise. I have chosen the work of landscape architects Sinatra Murphy who have created a full scale rendering of a McMansion in two-point perspective that floats above the clover leaf of a freeway intersection. I see this work as a public art version of the popular television series Kath and Kim. Popular because it demonstrates a reciprocal snobbery of suburban and urban living that does little to question the unsustainable nature of urban sprawl or consumption.
Figure 1: Bus shelter in Mitcham, Melbourne
Figure 2: Bugler, First World War monument Box Hill, Melbourne
Figure 3: Aslan McClennan. You Need Me. Stencil artwork for City Lights Gallery. Image courtesy of the Artist Figure 4: House in the Sky. Sinatra Murphy Landscape Architects. Western Ring Road, Melbourne.
[1] NAVA Quarterly, September 2005 No. PP242800/00004 ISBN 1032 9617
[2] Expression of Interest document from the department of Treasury and Finance
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